There are several continuing areas of development and improvement for semiconductor device fabrication. One such area is device size. The size, including width, of a gate structure in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) devices continues to shrink, providing benefits such as increased density and reduced power. Another area is the use of MOSFET devices having a high dielectric constant (high-k) material and a metal gate. The present disclosure provides improvements that relate to the fabrication of such devices.